Terminus: Aeducan
by DarthGabithaTheHutt
Summary: When the Lady Aeducan fails to find the Grey Wardens in the Deep Roads, she loses herself instead. But that won't stop her from doing her duty.


xxx

She'd met the young Queen of Ferelden once. Anora was pretty, polite, dressed in beautiful clothing. She'd clearly had the same sort of lessons that the young Lady of Aeducan had had, history and diplomacy, the way to show strength without seeming arrogant or threatening, the way to concede gracefully without seeming weak. But Anora's hands had no calluses, no scars from weapons' practice. Her slim shoulders were unused to the weight of chainmail or steel plate, and she was accompanied by bodyguards, not her . A story-book princess, valued for her beauty, her ability to bear strong sons, her ability to make a man look better than he was. Dwarven princesses were valued for their practicality, their ability to wage war as well, if not better, than their fathers, their ability to make a man be better than he was. And the Lady Aeducan was the finest of all Dwarven princesses.

But even she needed to learn a new kind of practicality to survive in the Deep Roads.

The first time she stripped the armour off a dead dwarf, she told herself it was no different to wearing the armour her grandmother had died in. Heirlooms were just official scavenging, that was what Gorim would say. But it was different. The armour was poorly made, but the occasional rust-hole was useful for tying it on. Her grandmother was probably rattling the stone at what she was wearing, but it was better protection against Darkspawn than the prison rags.

She had armour, she had a sword. An Aeducan had never needed more than that before.

So she started fighting. She started killing. She kept moving, because she learnt quickly that the Darkspawn flood to wherever she holed up and there was nowhere with enough supplies to make it worth holding out. She had been taught how to find water in the Deep Roads, how to make it fit to drink, and every Dwarven child knew not to eat the flesh of Darkspawn. She caught Nugs and Deepstalkers and got really good at stripping every last scrap of meat off their bones.

Gorim had mentioned the Grey Wardens, so had Harrowmont. Topsiders, the lot of them, but anyone who fought Darkspawn was worth something. But she never found any trace of them in the Deep Roads. She found Darkspawn, plenty of them, and plenty of the dead. Nothing living. Nothing worth siding with or fighting for. Nothing worth giving her life for.

She couldn't miss her father, busy as he always rightfully was with running Orzammar. She didn't miss Trian, even as she regretted his death. She did miss Bhelen. Her little brother, trying to solve problems that had existed long before he was even born. Then she remembered the smirk on his face when he'd accused her of fratricide and hated herself for missing him almost as much as she hated him for his betrayal, his cowardice. She tried not to let herself miss Gorim. A few longing looks and unsaid promises didn't give her the right to miss him as anything other than a Second, a strong sword-arm to have at her back.

But she couldn't stop herself from imagining him on the surface, from wondering if his eyes could see in the sunlight yet, if he had made it to Denerim. If he was still waiting for her. When he would stop. She prayed to the Ancestors for him, even as she failed to pray for herself. She prayed that he could find someone on the surface worthy of his loyalty, his Stone-given strength.

There was no way to count the days and no point in doing so even if she could. This wasn't a sentence she could outlast. She gained new scars, sliced off her braids to use as kindling, one inch at a time. She had no need of time down here, anyway. No more meetings or duties to be attended to punctually. Day and night had never meant much to the Dwarves and it was just as easy to cope without weeks or months. She'd burnt every inch of her original braids and the new braids stretched to her waist by the time she stumbled onto one of the ancient Thaigs, so old or unimportant that she'd never heard its name before. There she met Ruck, a pathetic shell, all that was left of a Dwarf when the Darkspawn corruption flowed sluggishly through his veins. His barely coherent mumblings were deafening to her after so long alone in the dark. She never said anything in return. She wasn't sure she remembered how to. Ruck didn't mind her silence, calling her _the pretty lady _and letting her search through his salvaged treasure for some decent armour, serviceable blades. Most of what she had found in the Deep Roads was Darkspawn-made and she could only take practicality so far before her skin started to crawl. Ruck had been hiding in Thaigs and his cave was packed with Dwarven-made equipment. All centuries old, of course, but Dwarves were long-lived and they built things to last.

She stayed with Ruck for a while, for longer than she should have done, and by the time she left, his mumbling was as familiar to her as the state rituals of Orzammar. She had no words left in her to tell him she was leaving, but he knew anyway and begged her not to go, his pleas far more lucid that any of his ramblings. She left anyway, travelling through Ruck's Thaig, learning how to treat wounds drenched in spider venom by sheer luck, almost dying before the Stone decided to keep her a little longer. There had been fewer Darkspawn in Ruck's Thaig, but their numbers increased again as she journeyed further. She butchered as many as she could, just because she could, and tracked scouts back to their camps to kill even more.

Warriors weren't meant to slaughter blindly, but she wasn't a warrior anymore.

The Darkspawn led her across the Deep Roads, across pathways and Thaigs forgotten by Orzammar, all traces of the ancient Dwarves' craftsmanship gone, destroyed by the vermin that had driven them from their homes. Filth and bones and blood and not much else, no real food, no clean water. She didn't know what the Darkspawn ate when there were no more Dwarves to feast upon, maybe the monsters ate each other, but it wasn't a source she could tap. She abandoned the Darkspawn trail to hunt other beasts, finally reduced to eating Deep Crawlers. Mushrooms were still plentiful, but only in certain spots and there was no way to keep them edible for more than a few days at a time. She was used to going hungry, but starvation wouldn't help her kill Darkspawn.

But the Stone still wanted her, it seemed, and led her to an abandoned campsite. No sign of Darkspawn, oddly enough, but there were runes scrawled over the walls. Dwarven runes, not old enough to be from the original inhabitants of the Thaigs. It wasn't the formal script she'd learnt in the Palace. Made no matter; Gorim had taught her the common runes as a child. She read the words carefully, running her fingers over the letters carved into the stone. Names, dates, the occasional comment on how someone fought and died. A list of the dead. The last name on the list had been carved only two months after her exile. The Legion of the Dead had been here. The only other Dwarves disgraced enough to be given to the Deep Roads. But they were given weapons and armour, high-quality equipment as they earned repentance for their crimes by slaughtering as many Darkspawn as possible before giving up their own lives. They would welcome her as another of the fighting dead, another disgraced soul. And they certainly wouldn't mind her stripping the place of anything and everything she could use.

One abandoned camp led to another; the Legion left rough maps and directions scrawled on the walls, the only way, she supposed, that they could keep track of themselves down here. There were fewer Darkspawn on this route, just the stragglers, the ones who ran rather than fight. She'd lost some of the blood-madness, enough to stop seeking battles, not enough to avoid them. Piece by piece, she gathered together a full suit of Legion armour to replace her scavenged and broken chainmail. The only weapons left behind were broken beyond her ability to repair. She still had Harrowmont's sword, somehow, but it would break. Sooner or later, she would break.

But before she broke, she finally came across the Legion itself, wandering onto their position on the bridge to the Dead Trenches that they'd held against all Darkspawn for centuries and killing half a dozen Darkspawn before they realised she wasn't one of them. They weren't like her. They still laughed and talked, still had names and used them. Still had people to fight at their side, to keep watch while they slept. Their commander spoke to her, knew who she'd been before, tried to make her stay with them. Too many words after too much silence; she stopped even trying to listen to him and kept walking, crossing over the bridge. The Legion knew better than to follow her or try to stop her.

_First day, they come and catch everyone._  
_Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat._

The rhyme echoed in the Stone, in her ears and in her dreams for days before she could make the words out. Even then, it took time before she could really understand what the words meant. When Branka's house had disappeared, Orzammar had mourned the loss of so many fine men and women. They'd held funerals for each and every one of them. Not out of certainty they were dead, she realised at long last, but in the hope that they were.

_Third day, the men are all gnawed on again._  
_Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate._

She'd always known that it was better to die than be taken by a Darkspawn. Every Dwarf knew that. When she had journeyed into the Deep Roads for the very first time, years ago, Gorim had had orders to kill her rather than let her be taken. She'd hated the implication that she could be beaten so easily. Silently, she thanked her father for another kindness she'd not recognised until it was gone.   
_Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams._  
_  
_Hespith was twisted and broken, destroyed by Darkspawn taint and the betrayal that could only come from love. If Branka was still alive, she had a lot to make amends for. If this could be amended. It certainly could not be forgiven. She would not forgive it. She would not live long enough to forget it.

Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn.

_Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew._  
_Eighth day, we hated as she is violated._

Once, it had been a Dwarf, but there was nothing left in it that was Dwarfish. Slime and tentacles, feeding on friends, loved ones, giving endless birth to the only thing the Dwarves had left to fear. Not Dwarfish. But once, once so long ago, _it _had been _she_.

_Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin._  
_Now she does feast, as she's become the beast._

The Lady Aeducan didn't know that her father was already dead, that her brother's quest for power was tearing Orzammar apart. She didn't know that the human King was dead, that the Grey Wardens were disgraced and hunted across Ferelden. She didn't know that in just a few weeks, two Grey Wardens and their friends would enter the Deep Roads in search of Branka. She didn't know that they would do what she could not and make Branka realise the immorality of what she had done. She didn't know that Gorim was safe on the surface, with a woman worthy of his strength and loyalty. That his first born daughter would have her name and live in the sunlight with a smile on her face and a brother who would die to protect her. All she knew that was she had lasted down here far longer than anyone could have expected her to, but that her time was about to run out.

She drew her sword and lunged for the Broodmother.

_Now you lay and wait, for their screams will haunt you in your sleep._

xxx


End file.
